On the morning of Sept. 27, at the newly renovated Kansas City Club in downtown Kansas City, Ingram's magazine convened an Industry Outlook forum on the Banking and Finance industry, the second such forum Ingram's has sponsored and the first since Sept. 11, 2001. Serving as chair was Crosby Kemper III, CEO of UMB Bank. Joining him were 16 other leaders of the financial services industry in greater Kansas City. Together they explored the full range of salient issues in the industry and shed an enormous amount of light on the obstacles and opportunities that present themselves.

The day began with an exploration of the challenges facing the financial services industry, an industry whose internal boundaries are less clearly delineated than ever before. Kemper defined a spectrum of short-, medium- and long-term challenges. In the short term, the currently low net interest margins present "a huge challenge" for banks like UMB, whose "fortress-like balance sheet is guaranteed to under-perform" under those conditions. In the medium term, Kemper expressed concern that if interest rates rise again, or if some other unexpected negative factor emerges, the current "housing bubble" could be punctured, given that "equity has gone in an unnatural direction from personal income."

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